A Hard-Hitting Lightness
A conversation between Sunah Choi (SC) , Thomas Bayrle (TB) , and Markus Weisbeck (MW) about production, intuition, and reflection, the principle of surprise and control, poetry and the immanent logic of the work as well as the precarious cohesion of provisional bonds.

MW: Thomas, you taught at the Städelschule for many years, and Sunah was your student. As at probably any school, each generation of students was drawn in by a sort of a zeitgeist, by fashions and trends. Was there a particular tendency that Sunah arguably aligned herself with when she was a student?

TB: When we first met, I immediately sensed an unusual tranquility, or I should say calm, that characterized her conceptual approach. I knew about her enthusiasm for literature, but she was impossible to categorize. And that’s exactly what makes a student’s work interesting to me: when I don’t get it right away. You don’t want an answer at once and instead wait to see how it develops. Because you want to learn something for yourself. With Sunah’s work, there was no way to predict the outcome.

MW: You once said in an interview that you learned from your students more than you taught them.

TB: Yes, exactly. With Sunah, I wanted to learn something about another culture—that’s the sort of thing that nurtures your own utopia. For example, she introduced me to the writings of the Korean author Yi Sang. There was an earlier work by her titled Learning Asia (2002). It’s about imploding rather than imposing, about compression rather than unfolding. It’s important that the substance matters, not the effect. That’s almost like a discipline unto itself.

MW: Sunah, what attracted you to the Städelschule in Frankfurt?

SC: In Korea, I studied Korean literature and language. During my studies, I started painting on the side, in a studio I shared with art student friends. I developed an interest in diverse forms of critical literature and art. When I decided to go abroad—as a relative latecomer to art school—I knew fairly quickly that I wanted to move to Germany.

TB: I think that’s wonderful when learning grows out of a decision. To my mind, it was striking that you had ramified intellectual interests, were involved in the resistance movement in Korea, in political circles—but without flaunting this background. These are benchmark points on your mental map and anchor an extensive conceptual grid in which all points are preserved, and then they gradually converge. Pure specialized expertise is too narrow to understand the evolution of your art.

SC: The Städelschule was a lucky choice, thanks to the teachers I met there. I started out in Georg Herold’s sculpture class, then, after six semesters, switched to Thomas’s class, after a stint as a visiting student in Peter Kubelka’s film class. Through their very different work, each of these three eminent artists helped me understand something I couldn’t have learned elsewhere.

MW: One conspicuous characteristic of your art are the unusual compositions and combinations of materials, in which individual elements operate in concert in an almost magical or magnetic way while retaining an incredible lightness. This is a question for both of you: what does the process of creating a work, from the initial idea to the final realization, look like?

SC: The way I work involves a great deal of intuition and the teasing out of logical interconnections. There’s no recurrent theme that runs through all of my art. It’s more that there are certain approaches I often rely on and that are ultimately associated with a theme. When a socially relevant issue draws my interest, I work through it in my art. I don’t have a preconceived plan—I draw on my personal library in what you might describe as an intuitive process. Sometimes it’s a chaotic mix, with decisions made on an unconscious level when the right kind of moment occurs, but it’s never something I can predict.

TB: For me as for Sunah, there’s no intellectual process that determines the genesis of a work; it’s usually a very emotional affair. And at bottom it’s always the same ideas that I develop in new variations. What excites me above all are social concerns and questions of substance as well as form—they’re the kindling, you might say. More specifically, much of my art goes back to my interest in China. As early as 1960, before anyone cared, I was curious about how a new social order was emerging, was being built from scratch, the incredible productivity, which functions in a fundamentally different way than here in Germany.

MW: Intuition and production are key aspects for both of you. But the ensemble of works made of magnets, steel, and stones created in 2013/2014 brings something completely new into play.

SC: The groups of works involving magnets are not primarily about the materials. These pieces are an attempt to spotlight the sculptural potential of the interplay between materials that are widespread in the urban landscape. In particular, I was interested in precarious cohesion as a distinctive condition characteristic of certain things, interrelations, or, more generally, states of affairs. It’s comparable to the form, structure, and function of utilitarian everyday objects—looking at duct tape, zip ties, or cramps, you also wonder whether they can sustain a bond, a temporary cohesion.

SC: My interest in unusual compositions and arrangements is already palpable in several earlier works, such as the photographs and installations. I’m fascinated with antitheses. The material may be heavy and severe, but in the right combination it can take on an air of lightness. These contrasts are what I want to see in order to show that impossible states of affairs—like an architectonic construction—are still possible in a figurative sense.

TB: In the early phase of my career, my approach was much more emotional and far less rational. What I find exciting in Sunah’s work is that there’s an intellectual basis that’s already in place when a work comes into being. You consolidate the materials and techniques of production in a creative process. The result is a formal hardness that doesn’t leave many possibilities open. I never did anything comparable in my own work. In my case, it was essentially constant experimentation that yielded ideas I would later return to. It’s probably much more in tune with today’s world to employ methods and capabilities the way you do, deliberately and with a researcher’s awareness.

MW: Which of Sunah’s works do you have in mind when you say that?

TB: In Automat (2013), boulders are lodged inside a spatial grid with a minimum of effort. You simply inserted three large natural rocks inside the steel construction as you welded it together. I would probably have more or less cut the thing apart and then put it back together. But it’s only the combination of antagonistic materials, steel rods and stones, and their mysterious cohesion that yield this hard-hitting lightness.

SC: Automat is about the formal translation of a ticket vending machine, a familiar object in the public space. Most vending machines are boxes encased in sheet steel on concrete bases, with precisely defined dimensions and proportions; the box houses the mechanical apparatus, sensors, a supply of coins, etc. Practical and ergonomic considerations determine the object’s material and form. In general, I’m fascinated by machines, by their materiality, form, technology, functionality, and significations. I wanted to create something new by quoting this object, paring it down, and replacing elements— the result was a sculpture.

TB: I like how the whole thing is a reference to an ordinary vending machine and at the same time a sculpture involving boulders. And yet it’s not just an impromptu sculpture. The mass-manufactured vending machine is a socially accepted object in public space. This work is firmly anchored in our real world. There’s nothing sentimental about it, no romantic investment in the material as such.

MW: To what extent are these formal, material, and substantial antitheses comparable to a poetic approach?

TB: There’s a Chinese proverbial saying that was coined by Laozi: “The soft overcomes the hard, the weak triumphs over the strong.” In Sunah’s work Bohnen Gleise I–IV (Beans Tracks I–IV, 2015), a few beans are stuck in a linear grid. That’s pure poetry—a hard metal panel, but not so hard that it couldn’t accommodate beans. This work infuses our technological world with enormous tenderness and engenders a wide space with simple means.

MW: Do the beans have any other implications?

TB: The bean’s shape is brilliantly simple, it’s a tiny sculpture, and a plant can grow out of it. So that predetermined rigid grid with the small unprepossessing beans buried in it packs a pretty explosive punch. Those beans are basically bombs, natural bombs. The growth that’s latent within them has positive ramifications—you might describe them as inconspicuous utopias. The work communicates with the creativity of nature, with our existence, and reaches far beyond formalism.

SC: The formal point of departure for Bohnen Gleise I–IV were cracks and gaps in the architecture of public space that are perceived as visual defects or dysfunctional. I wanted to learn more about the cultural significance of the bean as well. Its form and material were also relevant: a bean is essentially just a large dot, and the organic physicality of beans makes them the opposite of hard steel. So the beans stuck between the tracks are the outcome of an interaction between structure and action. There’s a vibe to the work on several levels that makes for an intellectual as well as sensual experience.

TB: This vibe is not something you labor to bring into being, it simply happens. It conveys itself through the tension that animates you. When a work has nothing to say to you, then you’re not going to take an interest in it. Sunah’s works have a distinctive allure. As I see it, a work needs to stimulate me, push my thinking and acting and the communication about them in new directions. It’s key that works don’t offer definitive answers— art shouldn’t explain everything. I like the fact that your art isn’t all about authenticity. That makes your work very free.

MW: Function and material can’t simply be twisted, but a different arrangement or inversion gives the thing new meaning. The interpretation of a derivative of a formal proposal essentially amounts to an alteration of the present as we perceive it. And sometimes the ease with which they come together in your works almost feels like wizardry. As though they’d always been destined for each other.

SC: The reduction to a small set of materials entails precision and, paradoxically, brings a kind of expansion and liberation. Between 2013 and 2015, when I limited myself to three materials—steel, stone, and concrete— I was primarily trying to probe their uses in the urban landscape and their sculptural potential. The works Automat (2013), Monolith (2013), provisorisch stabil (provisionally stable, 2014), Geschichtet (Layered, 2014), Bohnen Gleise I–IV (2015), and Wechselrahmen I, II (Interchangeable Frame I, II, 2015) similarly combine references to the urban fabric with very simple construction materials and minimal interventions into existing orders. These works feel self-evident and uncomplicated, but making them is a long and arduous process. I sometimes go back to earlier works and make something new out of them. Loop I–IV (2017) started with an object I designed for the installation Japan im Kopf (Japan in the Head, 2004). One byproduct of that installation was a sort of steel vase. It had been catching dust in my studio for years before it became the basis of a new work. For my solo show at Galerie Mezzanin, Geneva in 2017, I envisioned several sculptures, objects, and photograms that would form a self-contained ensemble to be titled Kólla. Then new elements came into play, like a rope tied in an endless loop, tree branches, and oversized bamboo brushes I made. Reusing my own earlier work is something I find exciting. Destroying, reworking, recovering things, these are strategies that very much appeal to me. They always revolve around remembering and forgetting, and that’s both constructive and liberating.

MW: Which role do remembering and forgetting play in other works? Do you like to make work in response to a predetermined theme?

SC: Untitled (Valle d’Aosta) I–IV (2011) was commissioned by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. They invited twenty artists to travel to different regions of Italy to develop a work and exhibit it in Turin. I went to the Valle d’Aosta, the Aosta Valley. I created a series of abstract sculptures that not only reflect on aspects of life in the region but also visualize the process of abstraction as such. Occasions like these are often a challenge, broadening my perspective and my repertoire of themes. The work Seoul 1:10,000 (2017) was the fruit of another invitation; the prompt was to make art that engaged with the Korean capital. I’m interested in maps and plans as abstract signifiers and representations of the world and reality. The blueprint, a technique I’ve used for years, has historical ties to architectural and urban planning. Separately, I’d spent several years working on a photographic archive documenting Seoul. So there were different sources that fed into what eventually became a large-format collage, what you might describe as a new and subjective map of the city.

TB: Do you dot your i’s and cross your t’s, as in a fully worked-out plan? Your ideas are sometimes so wild, but they still home in on the critical point; there’s a discipline to them. Then a spark goes off. A minute alteration in the brain—pure serendipity. Careful planning and preparation are important, but they aren’t everything—good old intuition, what’s left of it, is something I still believe in. That’s something wonderful about artists, that they often have a hunch and just act on it.

SC: That’s how I try to work, and so I’m keenly aware when a piece has reached that point, you just sense that, it’s a kind of intuition. In the beginning it’s an accumulation of ideas and tentative efforts. Subtracting and paring down are an important second step in the process. I pare down until I’m left with nothing but the pith—that’s usually when a work is finished.

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Thomas Bayrle is an artist and taught fine art at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from 1975 until 2004.
Markus Weisbeck is a designer and professor of graphic design at the Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar.

Translated by Gerrit Jackson
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The conversation was held for the monograph of Sunah Choi, which was published by DISTANZ Verlag October 2018.